Application servers provide an environment for programmers to implement application programs for users. BEA System of San Jose, Calif. provides one such application server called Web Logic Server (WLS). Third party vendors typically provide resource adapters, JDBC, JMS and JCA drivers, for use on these application servers. A programmer may use those resource adapters to provide the services to the user through the programmer's application program. Vendor resource adapters are varied and generally provide a broad range of features to be accessed by application programs.
Within an application server, it is desirable to provide support for global transactions. Generally, this involves tracking the status and availability of resources, changes to shared resources throughout the servers, and managing other features that affect the server system. Accordingly, an application server should be informed regarding transactions that occur between application programs and resources. To effectuate this, an application server may not provide application programs with direct access to vendor objects. Providing application programs with direct access to vendor objects would prevent the application server from knowing what was transpiring between application programs and resources. Application servers implement a middle-ware between the application programs and the resources to determine what transpires in transactions between them.
Previously, middle-ware was implemented by application servers in the form of statically generated proxies. The statically generated proxy included hard coded methods that handled interfaces for specific vendor resource adapters. The application server was designed with a proxy that assumed the presence of certain vendor features, such as a particular type of resource or a particular type of resource interface. These application servers worked well to provide the application programs access to those specific resources. However, an application program encountered difficulties if it was configured to use a resource adapter from a different vendor or any other resource adapter not statically included at the development time of the application server.
What is needed is a system and method for providing application programs access to extension features of third-party resource adapters in addition to allowing the application server to monitor the activities between the application programs and resource adapters. It would be desirable to provide the full access to the vendor object to the application programs as well as intercept calls made to an returned from the vendor object to handle server side tasks, global transaction enlistment, connection pooling, statement caching, tracing and profiling.